The Edtech Alphabet Soup Continues: SMOC

Sep 1, 2013

MOOC, MEET SMOC: Two professors at the University of Texas at Austin have given birth to a new term, SMOC, which stands for "synchronous massive online class." How's it different? The Wall Street Journal describes it as "somewhere between a MOOC...a late night television show and a real-time research experiment," where "students, professors and teaching assistants [are required] to be online at the same time." Running what appears to be a live MOOC doesn't come cheap: the two professors admitted they needed 125 school employees to run the show. And that may be why they're hoping to charge non-UT students for their intro to psychology SMOC. (We're taking bets on how long it takes for his acronym to make it to the official dictionary, after MOOC and BYOD made their way in Oxford's online version last week.)

The Edtech Alphabet Soup Continues: SMOC

Sep 1, 2013

MOOC, MEET SMOC: Two professors at the University of Texas at Austin have given birth to a new term, SMOC, which stands for "synchronous massive online class." How's it different? The Wall Street Journal describes it as "somewhere between a MOOC...a late night television show and a real-time research experiment," where "students, professors and teaching assistants [are required] to be online at the same time." Running what appears to be a live MOOC doesn't come cheap: the two professors admitted they needed 125 school employees to run the show. And that may be why they're hoping to charge non-UT students for their intro to psychology SMOC. (We're taking bets on how long it takes for his acronym to make it to the official dictionary, after MOOC and BYOD made their way in Oxford's online version last week.)